The Late Shift

If there were an international competition in taking care of babies through the night, Sara and I would win the gold medal.  We'd fall asleep while they played our National Anthem, but we would definitely show up for the award ceremony.  Sara's keen ears and motherly instincts shoot her right out of bed at the tiniest peep from a wee little mouth.  My great contribution is that once the baby is all fed and sleeping I can fall back to sleep instantaneously on whatever sleeping surface is available.  Honestly, I could get to full R.E.M. about one minute after lying down on the back of an angry bear.  Given that we're champion night sitters, it only made sense that we enlist for several shifts over the Christmas break.

As you might expect, these little girls don't allow their nocturnal care takers to spend a lot of time sleeping, but they are smart enough to maintain a very high cuteness level so that the insomnia isn't as irritating.  Unbeknownst to Nathen and Jennifer, an hour-long photo shoot broke out the instant they closed their door the first night.  We discovered that you can stack 'em up in all sorts of neat ways to get some very cool pictures.  As a result of the stacking we totally lost track of which one was Makayla and which one was Lily.  Nathen was able to sort them back out in the morning, but only after a night of referring to either twin as "punkin" and "peanut" rather than their real names. 

I really like this picture of me with my precious little nieces.  That's Makayla, or perhaps Lily, looking at me, while Katelyn smiles for the camera and Lily looks on.  Yes, that's John Lennon peering over Lily's head.  We learned that the only way to survive the night is to keep all the babies on the same schedule.  When the first little girl wakes up and starts eating, the co-sitter has to wake up another one and get her fed and back to sleep.  The sitter that gets his or her baby to sleep first has to wake up the third baby and get her all fed and happy.  After all three are back to sleep you get a good 2 hours or so of sleep before the process starts again.  The night shift wasn't too bad if you do it every 4th night...I'm not sure how Jennifer and Nathen can do it nightly.  It's possible for them because they're super parents.  I'm sure they'd have the highest spot on the medal podium instead of us.